The Ironic Ending

Not all friendships get off on the right foot.

One of my best buddies in high school was a skinny longhair with similar tastes in pop music. But Terry and I met under less than ideal circumstances. Another student had a serious grudge against me and was determined to make my early high school life as miserable as possible; however, he wasn’t quite sure he had it in him to handle a six foot 200 pounder on his own. So, one day after school, he and his hulking sidekick chased me into the nearby woods. On the way, they drafted Terry to help out.

Mining the Minors: Amos (1)

G.J. Wenham suggests the nomadic lifestyle of the shepherd tended to foster mistrust in ancient societies, as plausible an explanation as any other for the low estimation of the profession in the eyes of the elite. But though the Egyptians disparaged herdsmen, God uses the term as a compliment, and he called some of the greatest men in Israel’s history from among the flock.

Too Hot to Handle: He Made Them Male and Female

The most recent version of this post is available here. 

Horrific Hymnology

A year or so ago I wrote three posts on music (you can find them here, here and here). My point — then and now — was that we all have a responsibility to be discerning and to choose our music based on biblical principles rather than personal preference. And so that I would not be taking that responsibility away from anyone, I talked about the key principles rather than particulars of which musical pieces might be indicted or approved by a discerning observer.

Moreover, if anyone did not agree with me about their selections for congregational singing, I did not want to pass any judgment on them. After all, we all stand or fall to our own Master. So if the hymns and songs somebody else’s congregation wants to sing don’t square with the sort of list I would choose, I say, “No hard feelings.” I am not the last word in musical orthodoxy.

Ezekiel and the Future of Palestine

To whom does Palestine really belong?

The student of history encounters arguments for both sides, most of which transparently serve the agendas of their writers and pass themselves off as factual while trading largely on sentiment. But any careful reader of scripture understands that the Jewish claim to the land of Palestine goes back a whole lot further than May 15, 1948.

Having been unilaterally gifted the land then called Canaan via God’s covenant with their forefather Abraham around 2000 BC, Israel has spent more time in exile from the land of promise than actually living there.

It Ain’t Personal

Spiritual leadership is not easy.

Perhaps that’s part of the reason so few Christians seem to seek it, especially these days. But unless we opt out of family life and church life entirely, most of us are faced with a certain amount of responsibility, like it or not.

Elders are leaders. And in fact every Bible teacher, formal or otherwise, leads too. The act of writing down or publicly giving voice to a spiritual conviction is invariably an act of leadership that declares, “This way, not that way” or at least “This means X, it doesn’t mean Y”, no matter how delicately or deferentially one chooses to formulate one’s opinion. In addition, all mothers and fathers lead their children, or else their lives quickly devolve into an endless series of rather potent miseries.

Anonymous Asks (130)

“Should children be told Santa is fake?”

We can probably include the tooth fairy in this conversation as well. I think it’s fairly clear that if you pick up a Hebrew or Greek concordance, you will have great difficulty locating an equivalent for either “Santa” or “fairy”. The Bible does not address such questions directly.

So, I am trying to think back to my own childhood in a Christian home, asking myself how my parents handled this ...

Nothing New Under the Sun

If the shifting political and social narratives of the last several years have not convinced you that the vast majority of the general public are being lied to deliberately and repeatedly, then probably nothing will.

For myself, I am convinced that no matter the subject, just about the only story that isn’t accurate in any given news cycle is the one being told to us by politicians, corporations and media; the one which is said to be most popularly acceptable, and the one its authors are at greatest pains to preserve by censoring any contradictory information or expression of opinion that might make it less persuasive.

Mining the Minors: Jonah (19)

In the last five months I have written slightly under 26,000 words and 19 blog posts about the book of Jonah. That’s less than many, but more than most. Needless to say, I take the story of the rebel Israelite prophet very seriously indeed. Jesus viewed it as historical, and that seems to me the way it ought to be regarded.

Nowadays we are being told Jonah is actually a comedy. My idea of comedy basically begins and ends with Dick Van Dyke and Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Jonah most definitely is not in that vein at all.

So did I miss the boat, so to speak? Is laughter really the best medicine? While the view of Jonah as satire, parody or farce is not common in the churches in which I normally circulate, a few liberal Bible scholars with degrees and big reputations have written to that effect, and we should probably take at least take a few paragraphs to consider their position.

Too Hot to Handle: Abandoning Evangelicalism

The most recent version of this post is available here.

The Big Gamble

 The most recent version of this post is available here.

You Worship WHAT?

What do you think: worth dying for?

This is interesting.

Debate.org asked the following question: “If there is a god, does that being necessarily deserve worship?”

Get this: 73% said no. Are you surprised?

Probably not. But ignorant as it may be, perhaps the logic and underlying assumptions of the “no” brigade are worth a moment’s consideration.

Binary Thinking

How we choose to express disagreement is often more important than what we are disagreeing about in the first place.

Some folks have a tendency to take aim at the most ridiculous, transparently caricatured representation of the side they oppose. I used to put it down to straw-manning. I considered people who argued this way manipulative and calculating.

Now I wonder.

Anonymous Asks (129)

“What’s the difference between encouragement and flattery?”

Years ago, I got together for coffee with an elder from a church where I had enjoyed happy fellowship for several years. This was not the first time and it wouldn’t be the last; he is one of those godly older men who takes the job of shepherding very seriously indeed, and he kept track of me long after I had moved out of town and was no longer, strictly speaking, his “spiritual business”.

I had worn a particularly goofy, juvenile T-shirt to the coffee shop, and as we sat down together, he shot me a wry grin and asked, “So, when are you going to grow up?”

That was encouragement. It sure wasn’t flattery.

A Built-In Self-Destruct Button

If you have spent a lot of time reading the Old Testament and trying to get into the mindset of the average law-abiding Jew, you probably agree with me that Christian freedom is a marvelous thing.

The believer’s relationship to the Law of Moses is one of the most misunderstood aspects of Christian life, notwithstanding statements like “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” and “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

But freedom is not something we human beings do easily or naturally. We prefer rule-keeping.

Mining the Minors: Jonah (18)

When God gives a mission to one of his servants, there is always more than one thing going on. He is not just sending a message or getting a job done, but also teaching his most faithful followers more about himself.

We should expect this. He is God, after all. If anyone is equipped to play multi-dimensional chess, it is the Divine Mind.

Too Hot to Handle: Getting Reoriented

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Zombie Church

 The most recent version of this post is available here.

Creating Cognitive Dissonance

A little over a week ago, I was watching one of those bog-standard political videos you find on YouTube these days: you know, the ones where a conservative interviews a group of young Leftists without revealing his own political leanings. He asks each interviewee a series of apparently random questions about what they believe, after which the results are cleverly edited together to demonstrate the rank hypocrisy of Progressivist thinking.

In this case the subjects being discussed were tolerance and compromise, and the results were absolutely predictable. Every young Lefty being interviewed claimed tolerance was the most important of all values and that compromise was critical when engaging in political discourse, but of course the moment they were given a list of specific conservative values and areas of possible agreement with the Right, it turned out they were all hopelessly intolerant and refused to compromise on anything at all.

“Aha!” said the conservative writers and editors. “Hypocrisy!” Well, no. Not exactly.

Not Her Voice

Everybody wants to be heard. That’s understandable.

To understand and be fully understood is one of the greatest possible states to which human beings may aspire. When perfection comes, “I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known,” says the apostle.

That suggests very strongly that those of us who have a relationship with Jesus Christ are already as fully known as we will ever need or want to be. Think about that for a bit.

Anonymous Asks (128)

“Should God choose our mate?”

That’s an interesting question, and I think the answer may have a bit of both yes and no in it. Obvious comeback: If he did, how would you know? What would that look like? What evidence would you need to feel confident God had stepped into your personal circumstances and ordered your future living arrangements?

There are definitely Christians who think this is precisely what happens; perhaps not in every case, but at least in those where a man commits his way to the Lord in prayer, or a woman seeks God’s will for her in the matter of marriage. I will not argue with anyone who feels that way, but again, that’s all it is: a feeling.

Unless of course you can produce evidence ...

Too Clever For Their Own Good

Far too often the mere existence of a biblical record of how fallible, sinful men behave is taken as evidence of what God prefers.

That’s a mistake, whether it is done by unbelievers attacking the character of God and the morality of his instructions, or by believers looking to the frequently sub-optimal choices of Old Testament patriarchs for their standards of acceptable Christian behavior.

We can and should learn moral lessons from history, of course, but it is foolish to go beyond what is actually written. When we do, we are often being too clever for our own good.

Mining the Minors: Jonah (17)

If the book of Jonah were simply a historical account, by all rights it should finish at the end of chapter 3: Nineveh repents, God relents, end of problem for the next 100 years or thereabouts.

Except it doesn’t end, and we should be glad it doesn’t, because chapter 4 is the real point of the book. After all, Nineveh’s repentance was temporary, the salvation of its individual citizens only a matter of their avoiding their inevitable dates with Sheol for five, ten, twenty or seventy years, depending on their age at the time God held back his wrath against their city. If any of the reprieved Ninevites sought out the God of Israel and became proselytes, we never get to hear about it.

Too Hot to Handle: Will Science Survive Our Politicized Culture?

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Trinity Matters

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Too Close to Home

Robert Barron comments on the parable of the wedding feast in Matthew:

“Many devout believers find the brutality and violence of the story hard to take. In a very secularized society where people have lost the sense of God, you have to shake them into awareness with a shocking story with very exaggeratedly-drawn characters, with macabre and violent shocking action.”

Barron goes on to tell his listeners not to interpret the parable in a straightforward, literal way, or to compare this “crazy king” directly to God in every respect. He suggests the Lord was just using strong language to get our attention, to “grab us by the shoulders and shake us awake”.

Semi-Random Musings (22)

You really can’t make this stuff up.

As you have probably read or heard elsewhere by now, the 117th Congress got off to a rocky start January 3 with an opening prayer that concluded with the words “amen and awoman”. Naturally the video went viral.

Of course it did. In this emotionally-charged and hyper-politicized environment, how could it not?

Anonymous Asks (127)

“Do illegitimate children go to heaven?”

A child is called illegitimate when born to a woman not legally married to the father. He or she may be the product of any of a variety of circumstances: a one night stand, a brief, broken or casual ongoing sexual relationship, prostitution, adultery or even incest. Artificial insemination has also made it possible for a woman to bring a child into the world without committing to a relationship with the donor, and this option is becoming increasingly popular in some demographics.

The Language of the Debate (3)

You have three seconds to answer: What’s the opposite of egalitarianism?

Three ... two ... one ... okay, all guesses should be in now. If your answer was “complementarianism”, my first thought is that maybe you’ve been spending too much time in the Recently Released section of your local LifeWay or Family Christian Bookstore — except both those chains went belly-up in the last four years and it doesn’t look like anyone is stepping up to fill their shoes. I guess maybe you could be Reformed ...

Here’s a crazy thought: the opposite of egalitarianism just might be biblical headship. Now there’s a dusty old concept.

Mining the Minors: Jonah (16)

There is a little bit of numeric symmetry in this last chapter of Jonah: God asks three questions, and because Jonah’s animosity toward the people of Nineveh and his disappointment at God’s delay in judging them are so intense, the prophet three times asks God to allow him to die. There are also three things in chapter 4 that God is said to have “appointed”, so there are three sets of three. Perhaps the symmetry is not so accidental.

Needless to say, it is fairly obvious Jonah’s request to die went ungranted, or else his story would never have been written.

Too Hot to Handle: Heretics Aplenty

The most recent version of this post is available here.

What Are We Waiting For?

The most recent version of this post is available here.

A Second Opinion

One of Stand to Reason’s most popular posts last year was a Tim Barnett article entitled “What Must Ben Shapiro Do to Be Saved?” Barnett had been watching a 2018 YouTube interview in which the conservative pundit Shapiro got into a lengthy discussion with Roman Catholic bishop Robert Barron.

Shapiro and Barron found plenty of common ground, as one might expect. Then things got interesting.

Top 10 Posts of 2020

Trying to determine which ten of our 368 blog posts in 2020 drew the most eyes is not as straightforward a task as it might seem.

A post may have low numbers in its first week of publication, then catch fire later in the year when somebody links to it on Facebook or Twitter, or because it has a unique term in it that is being repeatedly entered into search engines. Totaling up pageviews only tells us a post is really popular when a few months have passed, meaning that articles written in the last quarter of any given calendar year are hard pressed to crack a Top 10 compiled purely by the numbers.

Sometimes, frankly, figuring out why any particular post drew so much attention is simply impossible even when you happen to be its author. (#6 comes to mind.)

Anonymous Asks (126)

“Did God create a second Adam?”

This is one of those questions that presumes familiarity with a particular New Testament passage. In this case the passage is 1 Corinthians 15, the subject of which is resurrection. It is there that the apostle Paul writes, “The first man Adam became a living being” (referring to a statement made way back in Genesis 2). Then he adds this: “the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” Paul then goes on to contrast this “last Adam”, who is clearly Jesus Christ, the “second man”, with the first man, Adam, in that “The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.”

That’s where the language of our anonymous questioner is coming from, and that’s our starting point. Paul calls Jesus at various times in the passage the “last Adam”, the “second man” and the “man from heaven”.

Saying Goodbye to 2020 (and my Career as a Prophet)

Last year around this time I decided to test whether I have the gift of prophecy, so instead of making the usual New Year’s resolutions, I reeled off a number of what I thought were really obvious predictions for the then-upcoming year, the vast majority of which have been (or will shortly be) proven correct.

As I write these words, my prophetic pitch with respect to the U.S. election is still hanging in the air over the plate, and January looks to be a very interesting month. As to my other four predictions, in all honesty I can hardly claim much prophetic acumen: it turns out I was shooting fish in a barrel.

Mining the Minors: Jonah (15)

In the last few decades, those of us who live in multicultural societies have been thoroughly propagandized against any visible display of racial animus. The social project of stigmatizing Western “racists” — to the point where even inadvertently acknowledging obvious differences between people groups commonly results in social shaming and summary disemployment — has been a great success among liberal whites, though notably less transformative across other demographics.

Having grown up in an era largely free of war, half-lobotomized by the steadily-mounting pressure of political correctness, more than a few of us may have difficulty imagining a time in which intense race-consciousness might have served the occasional useful purpose.

That would be most of the rest of human history.

Too Hot to Handle: Biden Our Time

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Tom: My co-writer Immanuel Can was exchanging opinions online the other day about the prospect of a Joe Biden presidency. One commenter wrote: “You have mentioned a day of judgment; perhaps this is how it starts.”

IC’s response: “That thought has occurred to me more than once.”

Since the prospect of a Biden presidency (or really a Harris presidency) has been looming over us during this Christmas season, and since the legacy media is determined to convince us the November election is a done deal, I’m okay with talking about what that might mean for believers, for the U.S., and for the world ... provided I get to say two things first about all the white flag-waving currently going on in the conservative and Christian media.

Protecting People from Truth

The most recent version of this post is available here. 

Non-Canonical Episodes

Did Jude have the gift of prophecy?

I wonder. It certainly seems a strong possibility. Prophecy is not merely a feature of the Old Testament, but is also numbered with the gifts given by the Holy Spirit to the New Testament church.

Prophecy was a practical gift. In the early church it also appears to have been a fairly common one. It did not manifest itself in the expected esoteric, oddball mutterings but rather in “upbuilding and encouragement and consolation”. In this the prophet functioned similarly to the teacher in today’s church.

Balancing Act

“A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight.”

False balances are generally associated with weights and scales. The idea is that there is an established price quoted per pound, ounce or liter, but when it comes time to measure out the product, the merchant has rigged his scales so that the balance shown does not reflect the quantity being measured, and the purchaser ends up paying for something he is not receiving. He is being ripped off.

We may come to view being fleeced as the cost of doing business, but the Lord loathes such practices. He calls them an abomination.

Anonymous Asks (125)

“Did Lot really have sex with his daughters?”

It may surprise you to find that Abraham’s nephew Lot is mentioned a grand total of 111 times in the Bible. That’s not a lot compared to David’s 1,100 or Abraham’s 293, but it’s considerably more than Elijah, Elisha or Daniel, all of whom have major Old Testament roles.

All the same, Lot is more of what we might call a “supporting actor” than a main character. He is best known for following his uncle Abraham on his quest for a city with foundations whose designer and builder is God. But if Lot is known more for being a follower than a leader, at least he was following a spiritual giant on a God-directed mission.

So did this godly man have sex with his daughters? Well, yes, he did.

The Commentariat Speaks (20)

Owen Cyclops is tweeting about Kirk Cameron’s cheesy Christian Christmas movie:

“At the end there’s like a 3-4 minute hip hop breakdancing ... thing, that’s the worst thing in the movie by far. I found this symbolically perfect because, if every worldview has its strengths and weaknesses, the weakness for American evangelical Christianity, speaking as an outsider friend rather than an overly critical foe, is that it has no ‘fence’ or ‘barrier’ to keep stuff like that out, which I suppose is part of the function of tradition in other manifestations of Christianity.”

I know nothing about Owen beyond what I’ve read in a single Twitter thread, but one may reasonably infer that he hails from one of these “other manifestations” of Christianity he refers to, one which offers believers the fence-like protection of tradition.

Mining the Minors: Jonah (14)

As finite beings of time and space, we cannot really know what God’s emotional life is like, or understand the way in which the Divine Mind makes choices. To imagine we can is simply projection.

In describing these incomprehensible things for us, the writers of the Bible have painted their picture with the very limited palette of human language. Moreover, the Spirit of God chose ways of expressing God’s feelings and actions that would communicate effectively to men and women of widely different cultures across a period of thousands of years.

I think the result is marvelous. Still, there are passages with which we struggle. The final verse of Jonah 3 may be one of them.

Is There Any Joy?

It is often said that joy is different from happiness. Happiness is a thing based on “hap” (which means chance), or one based on circumstances going well — on “good happenings”. By contrast, joy is an abiding sense of fulfillment and well-being, a disposition not based on circumstances, but one that is durable in the face of change. Something like that must be what RZIM spokesperson Max Jeganathan has in mind in this video, for example.

That distinction's good to note  — and true, so far as it goes. But we might press the issue further: What accounts for the quality of joy that enables it to endure when mere happiness is taken away from us?

Less Than He Is

Nothing you can do to him can make him less than he is.

Remember that saying.

His Birth

Because he came into this world in a stable. They put him in an animal food trough. There was no place for him at a low-class inn. Yet he was — and is — the Son of God, the Savior of the world, and the Eternal King.

And God did not prevent it.

From the moment of his birth, God made this message clear: “He is who he is; nothing you can do to him can make him less than he is.”

Out to the Curb

“Only one life, ’twill soon be past ...”

Garbage day in our city varies from block to block, so there is always something out for pickup. Quite often, along with the refuse of daily living, home owners will set outside for collection a few items that are still in good shape but are simply of no further use to them.

So out to the curb they go. Each abandoned item has its story.

Spiritual Treachery

Samuel Reproving Saul, John Singleton Copley, 1798

It is not enough for certain kinds of people to despise truth. They can’t just express their lack of interest and walk away.

I suspect every Christian who has ever shared his or her faith has run into people who have no trouble making their lack of interest clear, and no trouble beating feet. I think it’s fairly normal. Picture yourself talking to someone about the love of Christ and the things in his word that have become intensely precious to you; the things that make it worth getting out of bed every morning; the things for which you and I live.

Now of course if you’re like me, you’re not a perfect communicator.

Anonymous Asks (124)

“I have to write an essay for my university class on the Christian view of a technology. The topic that I choose is regarding genetic engineering and how we as a Christians view it.

So, some background information:

Genetic engineering is a procedure that could be done pre-natal (meaning before birth or during embryogenesis) or post-natal (on adults the procedure is called ‘gene therapy’).

The argument revolved around the question is whether this is allowed or not because ethically it’s as if we’re playing god.

I’ve asked my pastor about this some other time and he said that it’s allowed but only for medical purposes, not to change one’s aesthetics or to make someone racially superior.”

That’s an interesting question.

That Which Comes Naturally

“Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart.”

“I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

The first quote comes from the book of Proverbs, and we might paraphrase it this way: “Do not ever allow yourself to stop being consistently loving and trustworthy; make these qualities part of the fabric of your being.” As a father, King Solomon is challenging his sons and others who will eventually read his wise words to be people of exceptional kindness and consistency.

The second quote here is the prophet Jonah’s complaint to God, and it pretty much explains itself. But it also serves to illuminate the first quote a little bit.

Mining the Minors: Jonah (13)

My cat starts talking incessantly about ten minutes before breakfast, which is probably about how long it takes me to pry the pillow out of my ears and give in to her pestering. My dog doesn’t bark much, but he too will let you know if dinner is taking an unreasonable time to hit the bowl.

Hungry, stressed-out cattle also make noises. They do not suffer in silence. Underfed lambs bleat and cry. So do goats when they are hungry or thirsty, and their bleating gets louder and more obnoxious over time. (They will also butt you when they are hungry, but that only makes a sound if they happen to connect when you’re not expecting it.)

Too Hot to Handle: God and the Child of Divorce

The most recent version of this post is available here.

All By My Self

Back in the 1970s, the cool (or possibly groovy or far out) thing to do was to drop out of the system, tune in to drugs, and get with “the scene”. Whether it was to a flophouse in Soho or a park bench in Paris, young people went wandering.

When their bewildered parents pressed them for the logic of this sort of wild fit of lifestyle experimentation, the stock answer from the younger generation was this: “Sorry, Mom … Dad … I’ve got to find myself.”

Leaving Something on the Shelf

“Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands ...”

What is that all about, you ask?

Well, let me tell you what it’s not all about. It ain’t about taking the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and quoting it to the unsaved in hope of touching an unregenerate conscience and stirring it to life.

Some battles are not between people’s ears.

Running Out of Time

Utopian schemes are everywhere these days, and we would be remiss if we failed to acknowledge that they have a certain appeal to Christians as well as secularists.

Who could argue with solving the food crisis, ending unjust incarceration, abling the disabled, elevating the downtrodden, promoting the good, caring for refugees, or providing protection for the most helpless members of society?

Apart from using their plight to his advantage, the current ruler of this world does not concern himself one iota with the men and women at the margins of society. And yet they are of great interest to God. Social justice matters when it is social justice of the biblical sort.

Anonymous Asks (123)

“Why are birth defects allowed?”

Birth defects are not a small problem. One in 33 children in the United States is born with a birth defect, small or large. That seems like something about which a God who loves children might have a strong opinion.

Some birth defects are simply one of many consequences of living in a fallen world, as are tornados, tidal waves, earthquakes or disease. The vast majority, however, are due to choices made by human beings.*

So before we call on God to eradicate all birth defects, let me ask you this first: How would you feel if God overruled every bad decision you ever thought about making?

A Flashlight in the Eternal Sun

It has been pointed out that when God gave Eve to Adam, it was for eminently practical reasons and not merely on account of the typological significance of being “one flesh” with a complementary created being. So the primary purpose of marriage is often taken to be companionship — “It is not good that the man should be alone.”

Companionship is indeed of great importance, but we should not miss the point that this gracious gift was provided by God with a specific end in view — helping, and helping in a way that was appropriate to Adam’s needs.

It is logical to ask ourselves what exactly Eve was intended to help with.

Mining the Minors: Jonah (12)

There is belief and then there is belief.

The oppressed people of Israel “believed” God had sent Moses and Aaron to deliver them from Egyptian slavery until Pharaoh suddenly doubled their workload and they began having doubts.

But we shouldn’t be too hard on them: it’s easy to believe something when it’s purely theoretical and doesn’t cost you anything. When belief persists despite resulting in humiliation, physical injury, hunger or economic loss, that’s when it starts to look a little more credible.

The book of Jonah tells us that the people of Nineveh “believed God”. There was nothing abstract or theoretical about it.

Too Hot to Handle: Where Would You Like to be Judged?

The most recent version of this post is available here.

I Am the One

“I am the one you warned me of
  I am the one who’d never, never lie.”

— Blue Oyster Cult, 1988

Not my favorite band, for sure — but I do admire their theology.

At least in this instance.

So often we begin by thinking that evil, if it exists at all, is a thing “out there”. It’s in the world somewhere, not inside me. Me, I’m pretty good. Not perfect, maybe. But not so bad that God can’t overlook the difference (that is, if he’s really loving) and accept me as spot-on.

Then we live for a bit.

The Power of the Narrative

Headline this week in the Edmonton Journal:

B.C. glaciers 38 per cent thicker than expected, surprising study finds

And then there’s the sub-headline that follows it:

Some glaciers might last a few years or even a decade longer, but that still won’t save them from climate change

Everybody’s an Idolater

“The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands.”

Everybody’s an idolater. Well, almost everybody.

Christians are exempt. Of course we may struggle with temptation to idolatry of various sorts from time to time, but the characteristic pattern of the Christian life is not idolatrous. We do not continue in it. After all, idolaters will not enter the kingdom of God. Anyone whose life is characterized by idolatry is by definition un-Christian.